Memorial Day Footage
Posted by: Loren Coleman on May 26th, 2008
There can be no better day than today, Memorial Day, to reconsider the piece of video footage shown below, named after this holiday. Some have said that the second best piece of Bigfoot film/video footage, after the Patterson-Gimlin footage, is this video or that of the Redwoods footage.
It certainly is worthy of another look on this Memorial Day, a dozen years to the day after these moving images were captured.
The Memorial Day video is a Hi-8mm video that is purported to show a rapidly moving Bigfoot, going from left to right. It was videotaped on May 26, 1996, by Lori Pate while they were on a fishing trip with family and friends at Chopaka Lake, in Okanogan County, north central Washington. Some credit the footage to both Lori and Owen Pate. It was preceded by two sightings of an ape-like, hair-covered seemingly bipedal hominoid at lesser distances by others on the trip.
The Memorial Day video shows a figure, matching the description of Bigfoot, running across a hill. It disappears behind a less inclined, sloped area, then reappears briefly, walking this time, before going into the trees at the extreme right of the frame.
This is the third clip analyzed in the program Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science (the so-called “Exhibit 8:). The History Channel documentary produced and directed by Doug Haijcek, was released on January 9, 2003. In it, the location where the Memorial Day footage was taken is used to make forensic measurements to determine the film subject’s height, path, speed, and stride by measuring the subject against fixed objects in the background.
Derek Prior, a three-time All-American sprinter from the University of Washington, runs the same route as the figure to determine if the alleged Bigfoot’s running speed was too fast for a human to duplicate, to compare his speed and stride to the subject’s, and to give a visual comparison to the figure in the footage.
In the concluding segment of Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science, the results of the forensic measurements are revealed. The film subject - supposedly a Bigfoot - has the following alleged measurements:
A height of 5.3 ft (1.61 m)
A leg length of 2½ ft (0.76 m)
A running speed of 8.56 mph (13.77 km/h)
A stride of 4.25 ft (1.29 m)
Derek Prior, a Homo sapiens, on the other hand, was able to run the same path at 17.1 mph (27.51 km/h) and had a stride of 6.8 ft (2.07 m).
One aspect of the film remained a mystery. At the end of the Memorial Day footage, before the subject disappears into the tree line, it seems to grow taller by 8 inches (20.32 cm). One possible explanation was suggested that if it was indeed a real animal, it could be carrying a younger animal that had climbed higher on its back.
What do you think of the Memorial Day footage?
- Similar Phenomena:
It would be nice if the comparative test was done not with Derek Prior but with a 5.3 foot tall human running at 8.56 mph to measure the stride to speed ratio. If the ratio would differ significantly, indicating that the figure has a different anatomy than that of a Homo sapien of the same dimensions, then this would add more value to the film. I would like to see the magnified version that shows the 8 inch growth. Does the creature seem to grow in height only, or does it seem to become larger widthwise also? Overall, a very interesting film, but I wouldn’t rank it as highly as the Redwood film which shows more detail.
Happy Memorial Day, everyone!
On Doug Hajicek’s Legend Meets Science I remember seeing the Memorial Day Footage there. Esteban Sarmiento said that when the creature stopped running it got bigger than it was. Possibly a baby bigfoot was on this creature?
Richard, as I recall from watching Legend Meets Science, they showed the magnified footage. If memory serves (I could always be wrong) there seems to be a rather sudden projection or addition to the height, but not any noticeable increase in bulk. Hence the idea of a young one riding on the runner’s back that decided to climb up higher for a better view or something. Either that or it put on a tall hat.
You do make an interesting point about potential difference in gait, though.
I’m sorry, but this doesn’t look remotely close to the authenticity of the Patterson Gimlin footage. I see what is most likely a human being sprinting for the camera, probably in a hooded sweatshirt and matching sweatpants. Also, the overly dramatic music at the beginning really cheapens any credibility. If the footage is genuine why attempt to gussy it up with music and credits that are as long as the footage? If it’s real, let it stand on its own.
Gotta say: doesn’t seem too much to get excited about.
At least it’s a bipedal figure. I can’t tell what the heck the Redwoods video is.
Patty still reigns.
I’ve always been suspect of this piece of footage. jodzilla is right - it does not compare to the Patty footage, and from this distance it could be anything. Patty strolls in front of two men on horseback. This creature runs across an open field a half mile away from humans?
I agree with Richard888.
Dwa also made a good point. Patty still rules.
Thouhgt-provoking footage nevertheless.
I agree with Richard, it would have been nice if a 5′3″ person would try running the same path, because if this is a hoax, which I believe it is, then they would not have used an all american runner to do it. I don’t believe Lori or Owen was involved in this hoax, I think they were just observers with the good sense to turn on the camera. Also we have to remember that this was filmed on memorial day weekend when there is lots of teenagers out camping and maybe possibly trying to have a little fun with an ape suit. As for the 8 inch difference at the end of the film, I believe the hoaxer had enough running in a hot ape suit and probably had a hard time catching his/her breath and probably lifted the mask up on the top of their head thinking they were out of sight of everybody. But this is all speculation on my part and just ask M.K. Davis where speculation can get you in the bigfoot community. I just want to say I think we have all been a little hard on him. He has an opinion that might differ greatly from the rest of ours but that doesn’t neccesarily mean he’s wrong and we definitely don’t need to lambaste him all over the internet. Remember that speculation can and does lead to some great discoveries. Enough about that subject. My top evidence footage would obviously be Patty then Redwoods and then I think Scott Herriot’s footage. The memorial day footage just doesn’t cut it for me anymore. Just my two cents(I think I may have stolen that from you cryptidsrus, sorry I really didn’t mean too).
I forgot to say “Happy Memorial Day” my american neighbours!
AlbertaSasquatch
It’s great that they turned on the camera but it’s just so far away it’s hard to make whole lot out of it. The movements look to be a very human run as far as I can tell. To anyone who wants to get a better look try this trick, hold down the Control Key (ctrl) and on your mouse push the scroll button on your mouse forward or if you are on a laptop hold down ctrl and on the mouse pad put two fingers on it and move them forward. It should zoom in and give you a better look. Perhaps someone with a sharp eye will be able to provide more incite. Great post for Memorial Day, take care.
I could be wrong. But what gave this footage fame was the belief that the creature was too fast to be human, right? Now that that claim has been proven wrong, it doesn’t have much going for it. Until, of course, a 5-foot-3 human is made to run the same path and is proven to be too different kinesiologically speaking. Without the experiment this video is no better than any of the Youtube videos by Budget Productions - the main BF polluter on Youtube. I revisited the Tennessee Bigfoot from the helicopter footage and it looks much more convincing. It should occupy the Third position until a kinesiology experiment proves otherwise.
My first reaction was just a guy wearing a black suit running. Nothing too Bigfoot-y. But to each his own, I guess.
Happy Memorial Day!
Never bought into a ‘mask lift’ at the end. The idea seems contradictory. If a hoax, why go to all that trouble to put on an ape suit and run across an open slope for quite some distance only to give yourself away by lifting up the ‘mask’ just a few steps before the safety of the tree line?? Doesn’t make sense to me. Surely the ‘hoaxer’ could have hung on for a few seconds more.
I believe there have been photos taken from up where the subject traversed (by Rick Noll??) and the shoreline and campers at the shoreline would have been in plain view (as was the case vice versa) and it’s unlikely the ‘hoaxer’ would have assumed he/she would have been out of sight at the point where the so called ‘mask’ lift takes place.
I don’t know what this footage shows but I don’t buy into a mask lift. Besides, how can a mask move via it’s own power? At one point in the footage the shape at the top of the form ’seems’ to move on it’s own without being touched by the arm.
I wanted to believe this video is real, but it appears to be a hoax. I seen an enhanced video of it at another site and it appears to show a mask being lifted and then swung back and forth in the subjects hand.
I also think the Freeman footage is much better than either the Memorial Day or Redwood footage. But, Patty is still queen.
If we entertain the thought that the P/G film, the Freeman film, and the Memorial Day footage are all hoaxes, then the behaviors of the subjects in the films are revealing.
The P/G bigfoot is walking along without apparently caring that it has been caught out in the open by two men on horseback.
The Freeman bigfoot is almost cowlike, merely moseying along, even though it has been discovered by a human. Like the P/G bigfoot, rather odd behavior for a secretive, ever elusive animal.
In the Memorial Day footage, the bigfoot is running very quickly from one point to another.
What is the difference in the behavior of these three subjects and what difference does it make?
If all three are hoaxes, then the behavior of the subjects tells the tale. The P/G and Freeman footage were hoaxed by the filmmakers themselves, and there was no threat to the subject (who was in on it, of course). On the other hand, the Memorial Day film was a hoax perpetrated by the subject on innocent folks with a camera. The subject had to hurry in order to make a clean getaway.
To clarify what I think in light of other comments:
1. If the Freeman footage is what I understand it to be (Is this the one that we see the famous still of one svelte sas?), it looks just like a person in a suit. Both Patty and the anecdotal evidence seem to jibe. The Freeman doesn’t fit.
2. I can’t tell what is in the Memorial Day footage. And I don’t think anyone can. Too far away; too ambiguous. I reject the debunk “explanations” just as readily as I do the “ape” ones. As I said, at least we can tell it’s a bipedal animal. The kind is VERY open to question.
3. The only other piece of photo evidence I put anywhere near Patty’s league (and, I guess it follows, the only other one that really intrigues me): the Peguis, Manitoba, video from March 2007. (Go to Youtube; it still should be there.) It says much for the field that I haven’t heard a thing about this one since pretty much that time. As a friend of mine who isn’t prone to making pronouncements lightly says: if Patty is Bigfoot, then this is. (Oh. And let’s not debate that one here. You can find the earlier Cryptomundo threads, and my thoughts are all over those.)
jerrywayne:
I’m open to the possibility that the Memorial Day footage wasn’t a hoax at all. It could be a juvenile sas. It could be a person, running, in an outfit appropriate for that purpose. (Hoody, sweat pants. Many run in clothes intended to generate a heavy sweat.) So no one needs to have been hoaxing, or hoaxed. (Unless one can count thinking a person is a sas “being hoaxed.”) But no one can tell that for certain, or for anything near certain; and there doesn’t seem any way that anyone has told me to show that it’s what it’s purported to be. My gut is that a human - who again does not have to be in an ape suit to look like that, at that distance - can definitely handle the terrain in that way, that fast.
As to P/G, as I’ve said before: the evidence indicates not only that sas frequently make retreats either that leisurely or more so. Frequently they don’t retreat at all; they threaten until the observer does. Or doesn’t, as has also happened, in which case the sas then, invariably, does.
Either way, I can see a scientist pushing farther into the topic based on a careful analysis of P/G. Just look at the ones who have.
Not the Memorial Day video, though. Not enough there.
DWA wrote:
100% correct DWA. It’s too inclusive to ’show’ anything of note.
Claims of clearly a mask being seen lifted, complete with white latex insides as some have insisted on other forums, are as fanciful as those claims that insist they can clearly see a baby or young one moving around on top.
Lyndon:
I think that sasvid analysis falls victim to the Scientific Omniscience Presumption (SOP), which cripples all scientific movement into the unknown.
We presume someone would HAVE to have shot a sas , or hit one with a car, or photographed one, or videotaped one, etc. Well, all those things have happened, if you read reports, and all of them more than once. We further presume that if any of those things would have happened, the long rough road to confirmation would inevitably have been traveled; there’s NO WAY it couldn’t have! Something this big, running all over the continent, science would HAVE to know about by now. I mean, science knows everything!
We do the same thing with photo and video evidence. The latest technology, we presume, HAS to tell us what’s in that footage. There’s NO WAY that science and the latest technology can’t discover everything, right now. If science says it isn’t so, we presume, it can’t be so. If we can’t see what is in that video, we make stuff up, because this technology CAN’T come back with an “inconclusive.” IT JUST CAN’T.
Well, our brave troops in Iraq can tell you about the limits of the latest technology. And science, if we just read the papers, is finding out stuff it didn’t know – or finding out it was wrong – all the time.
No one will EVER prove what Patty is, or what this video shows. We need to find the animal, and science needs to confirm it.
Get over it!
I did have a question.
Any information about the setting? How remote is it? How likely is it that a human would be running there? Is there a road or trail anywhere near where the figure was first and last seen?
My thoughts as to what it could be:
1. Runner. (A petite one, apparently. Either female, or a very small guy.) Wearing a dark hoodie and same-color pants. Not out for a hoax; just out for a run.
2. Sasquatch. (A small one, either a juvenile or a subadult or small - quite small, bordering on dwarf - adult female. But then, we have a pretty wide size range in adults too, don’t we…?)
No other possibilities. NO WAY it’s an ape suit. Show me one other instance of anyone in an ape suit moving over terrain like that with that much ease.
But we’ll never prove what it is. We can’t.
Found the report on the BFRO website.
RSR!
Although the analysis in the report doesn’t exactly sway me, it’s interesting to read.
Note also that there were about 100 people in the vicinity. Which makes that location, on Memorial Day weekend, a place a runner could most plausibly be.
DWA,
Rick Noll did some very thorough background work concerning the actual site of this video footage.
If you go to Bigfoot Forums you should still be able to find some old threads there where Rick’s input was very interesting.
i just cant beilve that this is REALY footage of a bigfooot.in the first half it is running kinda odd like how a human runner would run.then in the secound half it is just walking like a human who is tired and needs to rest.i say its fake.or just a monkey.